Nerding time!
Alright! So while I sit here not changing out icons like I mean to, I've been looking lately at some tabletop game stuff.
Just as a note--I love tabletop games. I think they're really awesome. One that I haven't played in a while but recommend is Trinity, from White Wolf. It's super-awesome.
However, that's not what I'm looking at just now--just now I've been reading over the Final Fantasy RPG from www.returnergames.com, and, to my surprise, it's actually pretty good. Very thematic, very interesting. The mechanics are quirky, and what it perhaps lacks in post-chargen customization it more than makes up for in the way that it actually seems to serve well for what it's designed for. It has a pretty good approach to making characters, with an emphasis on 'the cast' as opposed to single characters, and in thinking about it I've come to rethink a few things that I do with games normally. Granted, that's nothing new, because I've been rethinking that all the time lately, but I like it.
In particular, a gem that I like from it is a system of 'traits' and 'key points'. Now, in addition to just 'pick some traits to help describe your character', it has a system with a number of these traits, positive and negative, such as 'ally' and 'nemesis' or 'contacts', 'beauty', or 'lone wolf'. Basically, you acquired these 'key points' over the course of play. You start with none, but may get a few for putting a lot of work into your character (drawing a picture, writing a story, whatever) and you gain them over time through their use. Negative traits gain you these points when they harm you, and you can spend them to make these traits 'come up'. For instance, you can spend them when meeting a noble if you have the 'nobility' trait to say 'oh yeah, I know that guy'. It's divided into 'tied' and 'spontaneous', with 'tied' requiring that you tell the GM ahead of time and 'spontaneous' being 'use these whenever'. Even more interesting is the fact that not only you but the entire party can spend these points together to affect the overall narrative of what's going on in interesting ways. So, it not only gives the idea that the GM and players craft the story together, but actually gives mechanical incentives and mechanisms to encourage this practice. I like it when games do that.
Of course, if there are any systems that any of you are currently looking at or love dearly, I'd like to hear about them. After all, I'm working on tabletop stuff instead of, say, original writing projects like /some people on this list/. Ahem.
Just as a note--I love tabletop games. I think they're really awesome. One that I haven't played in a while but recommend is Trinity, from White Wolf. It's super-awesome.
However, that's not what I'm looking at just now--just now I've been reading over the Final Fantasy RPG from www.returnergames.com, and, to my surprise, it's actually pretty good. Very thematic, very interesting. The mechanics are quirky, and what it perhaps lacks in post-chargen customization it more than makes up for in the way that it actually seems to serve well for what it's designed for. It has a pretty good approach to making characters, with an emphasis on 'the cast' as opposed to single characters, and in thinking about it I've come to rethink a few things that I do with games normally. Granted, that's nothing new, because I've been rethinking that all the time lately, but I like it.
In particular, a gem that I like from it is a system of 'traits' and 'key points'. Now, in addition to just 'pick some traits to help describe your character', it has a system with a number of these traits, positive and negative, such as 'ally' and 'nemesis' or 'contacts', 'beauty', or 'lone wolf'. Basically, you acquired these 'key points' over the course of play. You start with none, but may get a few for putting a lot of work into your character (drawing a picture, writing a story, whatever) and you gain them over time through their use. Negative traits gain you these points when they harm you, and you can spend them to make these traits 'come up'. For instance, you can spend them when meeting a noble if you have the 'nobility' trait to say 'oh yeah, I know that guy'. It's divided into 'tied' and 'spontaneous', with 'tied' requiring that you tell the GM ahead of time and 'spontaneous' being 'use these whenever'. Even more interesting is the fact that not only you but the entire party can spend these points together to affect the overall narrative of what's going on in interesting ways. So, it not only gives the idea that the GM and players craft the story together, but actually gives mechanical incentives and mechanisms to encourage this practice. I like it when games do that.
Of course, if there are any systems that any of you are currently looking at or love dearly, I'd like to hear about them. After all, I'm working on tabletop stuff instead of, say, original writing projects like /some people on this list/. Ahem.